Young and restless. They’ve been racking up the mileage over the summer and Saturday (Sept. 11) the Seattle Pacific University men’s and women’s cross country teams will pull on the singlets for the Emerald City Open at Seattle’s Lower Woodland Park. The Falcons’ two young teams will be joined by the likes of Western Washington, Puget Sound and host Seattle University on the 5000- and 8000-meter courses. Action gets underway with the women’s race at 10:30. SPU stays in town the following weekend for the Sept. 18 Sundodger Open at Lincoln Park.

The year to come. Coach Doris Heritage is back for her 27th year, and will take her teams north to Alaska later this month for a pair of meets in the Fairbanks area. The bulk of the schedule, however, will be situated in-state, including the NCAA West Regional, to be held Nov. 6 at Bellingham. In all, six of the eight regular-season meets will held along a 150-mile stretch of the Interstate 5 corridor. The Great Northwest Athletic Conference Championships shift to northern California and will be hosted by Humboldt State Oct. 23.

Men of good word. Heritage is particularly high on her men’s team, which retained its top five scorers from 2003, plus picked up a couple of plum additions. Tim LeCount (Jr., Battle Ground, Wa.), who was 17th in the region last year, headlines the road crew. LeCount placed in the top 12 five times last fall and won the GNAC outdoor 5000 crown in the spring. Doug Gibson (So., Yakima, Wa./Riverside Christian) gives the Falcons an excellent 1-2 punch. Gibson, a transfer from Washington, was the top scorer in last week’s varsity-alumni run. Seattle Pacific seeks to break into the top five tier in the GNAC. It took eighth the past two seasons.

Women building a base. Meanwhile, the women’s squad will face a bit of a rebuilding mode. Karen Dickson (So., El Dorado Hills, Ca./Oak Ridge) should rate as a contender for the GNAC individual crown, yet the team will be hard-pressed to repeat as GNAC champion after losing the league’s top two harriers, champion Josie Lavin (Sr., Bremerton, Wa.) as well as Jamie Witt, the team MVP. Lavin intends to redshirt while Witt elected to graduate last spring. In all, the women lost five of their top seven scorers. Dickson, who was No. 3, came on strong during the track season, earning a trip to the NCAA Championships in the 10,000. Heritage hopes to groom newcomers Tracy Kuhn (Fr., Port Angeles, Wa.) and Karin Rohde (Fr., Bellingham, Wa./Mount Baker) for 2005, when Lavin returns and the program should be peaking.

Coaching staff. Coach Doris Heritage (27th year) has guided the SPU women to 10 top-10 national finishes and conference titles in six of the last nine years. In 1996 the Falcons won the West Region and her teams finished as high as second in the AIAW (1979, ‘80) and third in the NCAA (1983, ‘86) championships. Nineteen harriers have been All-America, including two national champions. The world’s premier distance runner of the Sixties, she won five consecutive world cross country titles from 1967-71, and was a member of the 1968 and ‘72 U.S. Olympic teams. Heritage has coached the U.S. world cross country championship team, served as an assistant at many international meets, including the 1988 Olympics, and is a six-time women’s conference coach of the year at SPU. In January of 2003 she was inducted into the Falcon Legends Hall of Fame Heritage was already a member of the National Distance Running, U.S. Track & Field and U.S. Track Coaches halls of fame. Assisting Heritage as coaches again this season will be Erika (Botha) Daligcon and Lane Seeley. Daligcon ran for the Falcons from 1995-96. Seeley is a physics professor at Seattle Pacific.

Missing links. For the latest and best information on Seattle Pacific University athletics, stay where you're at -- on The Falcons Online. For updated standings and statistics, see the Great Northwest Athletic Conference web site.